


Good Little Soldier

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Codependency, Episode: s15e16 Drag Me Away (From You), Gen, Post-Episode Coda, Pre-Series Dean Winchester, fix-it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27173485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: “You’re acting weird,” Sam says in a motel room in Rochester.It’s been a week since something put its hands on Dean’s little brother with intent to kill, and he's still seeing dead kids every time he closes his eyes.No shit,Dean thinks.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	Good Little Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> The origins of this fic basically trace back to a Discord DM conversation that featured a lot of yelling, because you cannot tell me that Dean Winchester saw a pile of dead kids at fourteen—a pile that gave him _nightmares_ —and expect me to not have questions or comments.

The smell was the worst part, a putrid stench that wormed its way into his nose and mouth, making him gag. He could hear Caitlin asking  _ what is it? what’s wrong? _ at a distance, but all he remembers is that he couldn’t get away fast enough.

“You’re hiding something,” she’d said on the way back. “I’m going to figure out what it is.”

Tough talk, but in all the excitement that followed, she’d forgotten all about it. All Dean could think was  _ why would you ever want to? _ It’s a  _ gift _ to not know the things he knows—a gift to not have to see. He looks at Sam while they’re walking out the door of the violently orange motel, retro carpet stinging his eyes, and he thinks  _ here’s one thing I’ve done right. _

That Sammy doesn’t have to know—doesn’t have to see. That’s good. That’s right. He’ll take the brunt for the both of them.

And then he thinks of the witch’s hands on Sam, on his tiny shoulders, tight around his neck, and maybe he hasn’t done anything right after all. The candy bar he’d eaten for breakfast threatens to come back up.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks, little eyebrows knotted together.

“Fine,” Dean says. “Just your face made me sick for a second there.”

Sam makes a face at him.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Grow up,” Sam says.

Dean punches him on the arm, and Sam shoves him and says, “Quit it,” and Dean doesn’t think of anything anymore. He shoves the memories down and tries to get on with it, but maybe some tiny part of his brain in the way back, the part that remembers rotting, putrefying corpses in tiny miniature thinks,  _ maybe. _

The ride away from Granville is quiet. Their dad keeps the radio off, and Dean isn’t in the mood for talking. Sammy tries for a while, telling Dean nerd-boy facts he read out of one of the books he’s always got his nose shoved in, but the silence in the car is oppressive, and eventually Sam gets the hint.

Dean wishes Dad would turn on the radio, but he doesn’t, and Dean knows better than to ask.

Sam is right there, right behind him in the car, but it’s not close enough. Dean keeps sneaking peeks at Sam like he’s going to disappear unless Dean is looking right at him. His dad glances over at him and raises an eyebrow after a third or fourth time, and Dean’s mouth settles into a grim line. He gets the hint and stops squirming, but he feels itchy in his skin, like a pressure is building up in his brain, back behind his eyes when he’s not looking at Sam.

He settles for watching Sam through the reflection of the passenger side mirror, Sam staring out the window, daydreaming about whatever it is that goes through his head.

When they stop for gas, Dean complains of a stomachache and goes to lay down in the back. Sam makes to get out of the backseat to take Dean’s place riding shotgun, but Dean’s hand shoots out and catches him around the wrist before he can go. Sam shoots a glance at him, questioning but quiet, and Dean doesn’t say anything—just keeps his mouth set in the same tight line and doesn’t let go.

Dad grumbles about not being a chauffeur but lets it go—he really is in a good mood today; the hunt must’ve gone well.

Sam tries to tug his arm away only once. Not very hard—he could break Dean’s grip if he really wanted to—but experimentally, testing. Once he figures out Dean’s not going to let him go, he settles into it. He lists slightly into Dean, the fabric of his shorts butted right up against Dean’s hair. It smells faintly musty and unwashed, sour and familiar. Comforting as a lullaby. Sam lets his hand go limp while Dean holds it right where he wants it, low down against the back of the seat where Dad can’t see. He can’t help but notice the way the fingers of Sam’s slack hand curl perfectly around his heart.

Dean looks up only once, when a sudden pothole jolts him up off the seat, making Dad curse and the car buck. His eyes fly to Sam, checking. Just checking. He expects Sam’ll be looking at whatever they hit, but Sam is looking down at him. He’s wearing the face he makes when he’s trying to figure something out, when Dad sets them down with a pile of newspapers and tells them to find the pattern. Their eyes meet, and Dean looks away first, curling back into the seat of the Impala with Sam’s little bird wrist held safe in his hand.

* * *

“You’re acting weird,” Sam says in a motel room in Rochester.

It’s been a week since Granville, since something put its hands on Dean’s little brother with intent to kill.  _ No shit, _ Dean thinks.

“Am not,” he says.

“Are too.”

Dean sighs. “Can we stop it with the kid stuff?”

“Whatever,” Sam says, sounding hurt. “I notice things, you know. And I know you. So whatever you think you’re hiding, you’re not.”

“Dad didn’t notice.”

Sam snorts. “Dad doesn’t notice a lot of things.” He gets up from the bed. “I’m going to get something from the vending machine. You want anything?”

Dean tenses up as if on cue, hands twitching where they want to reach for Sam.

“No,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Sam brings him a bag of chips anyway, but the whole time Sam’s gone, Dean’s counting the seconds, tapping out a nervous beat against the bed, digging his fingers into the meat of his thighs. For the rest of the night, Dean doesn’t take his eyes off Sam for more than a second. Sam watches Scooby-Doo on the grainy TV set, orange crumbs staining his fingers and the corner of his mouth, and Dean watches Sam.

If Sam notices, he leaves it alone.

* * *

If Dean ever wet the bed, he doesn’t remember it. Sam had, a few times when they were babies. Dean remembers waking up and hauling a fussing, grouchy Sammy out of bed, standing him in one of a number revolving motel bathtubs, stripping the wet clothes off him and hosing him down under warm water. When Sam got a little older, his task included joking with Sam, making him feel better. Making sure he knew it wasn’t his fault.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” he’d say, rubbing broad circles on Sam’s back. “You’re just a little kid. Just wake me up next time if you have to go, alright?”

And Sam would nod, tear-stained face quickly pushed into Dean’s shirt while Dean got him into fresh pajamas, stripped the bed, and tossed towels onto the wet spot.

He’s dealt with bed-wetting—just never his own.

He wakes up to the smell, the pungent, recognizable scent of urine in the air. He wakes up to Sam shaking his shoulder and hissing “Dean!” under his breath.

“Whatsit?” Dean asks, the comforting haze of sleep evaporating all at once as he recognizes the sound of Sammy in distress, his focus sharpening instantly. “Sam, what is it? Are you okay?”

He keeps his voice down—another lifelong habit: don’t wake Dad. He notices everything else in quick succession: Dad snoring in the next bed over, Sam looking at him with wide eyes in the near dark, and the puddle of wet he’s sitting in, warm and just starting to cool.

He curses under his breath. “Sammy, did you wet the bed?”

“Not  _ me,” _ Sam says, somehow finding it in him to sound offended at—Dean checks the clock—two in the goddamn morning.

Dean curses again. “I did not.” But he thinks about the dream he’d had—an abandoned cannery, the shadows shifting and bending while he just knew they were alive, the hair-raising feeling of being watched by something just out of view, his fingers making contact with pale, clammy flesh—and he’s not so sure. “Fuck. Okay, c’mon.”

He expects Sam to tease him, to give him shit, but he doesn’t, not even when they’re safe in the bathroom, a plywood door muffling the sound between them and Dad. Sam doesn’t say a word, just helps Dean strip the bed and sop up the mess with Dean’s towel that’s still wet from his shower earlier.

They rinse off in the shower, quick, without even bothering to let the water heat up first. Dean’s paranoid about the light, about the fact that it must show under the crack of the door, afraid it’ll wake Dad up. He doesn’t want to chance it—if it was just him, he wouldn’t, but even more than that, he doesn’t want Sam to slip and fall and crack his head open against the bathtub.

They still haven’t said anything, eyes wide and tired. Sam yawns so big it cracks his jaw, and Dean looks at him. Sam reaches for the handle to the bathroom door, and Dean has to say something. Has to—

He reaches out and touches Sam’s shoulder. “Don’t—” is what comes out.

Sam shakes his head. “I won’t say anything.”

They stuff the wadded-up sheets under the bed and remake it with clean linens from the closet, quiet as ghosts. If Dad notices anything amiss in the morning, in the faint smell of public urinal in the air or his sons’ quiet, dark-stained eyes, he doesn’t say anything.

* * *

Sometimes Dean can’t breathe. It takes over him when he’s least expecting it. He’ll be standing in the middle of a Gas ‘n’ Sip looking through the magazines, and it’ll hit him, a sudden feeling that there’s not enough air in the room—that he’s choking on his own tongue, throat narrowing and sticking against itself.

He’s careful to never let it show, forces air in and out of his lungs to prove to himself that he can, even when his brain is screaming  _ no _ at full volume. Sometimes he’s sure that he’s dying. The first time it happened, it scared the shit out of him right in the bathroom of a diner, and by the time he came back to himself, he’d sweated clean through the collar of his shirt. He found himself blotting at his shirt with paper towels, pulling the collar of his flannel higher around his neck and flinching when a loud knock came at the door telling him to hurry it up.

He has no idea what makes it worse—it just happens without warning—but one thing makes it better, and that’s Sam. It’s Sam where Dean can see him, Sam in his line of sight, Sam within touching distance so Dean can reach out and get his hands in Sam’s hair, on his shoulder, on his hand like Sam is still five years old and needs help crossing the street.

Something’s up with him, but it’s fine. It’s nothing. He’s just too much in his head. He’ll get over it by the time they hit their next stop, and as long as no one can tell, it’s fine. It turns out he’s not hiding it near as well as he’d hoped.

“I’m thinking burgers for dinner,” Dad says in Durham. “How’s that sound?”

“Sure,” they say.

It isn’t really a question. They both scramble to get ready, hopping up from the table where Sam had been reading a book and the bed where Dean had been watching Sam while pretending to watch TV.

“Sam, why don’t you stay here? I want to take a ride with your brother.”

“Okay,” Sam says, looking uncertainly at Dean and back at Dad. “Sure.”

Dean gives him what he hopes is a reassuring smile as his stomach sinks all the way down to his feet.

They get in the car, and Dean spends most of the ride wondering what exactly he did wrong. The radio is playing, something soft and light in the background, too low for him to really make out the sound. He can pick out every third word of the radio host’s voice if he tries, so he does.

It rained recently. The road glitters up at them, gleaming beneath streetlights, throwing the reflection of the occasional neon sign into the window. Every rain drop looks like a small shell of glass against the passenger window. Dean wouldn’t dare put his fingertips to the glass, but he thinks of it. Thinks of tracing each little bead like constellations.

“Dean,” his dad says, staring straight out the windshield, eyes on the road when the golden arches come into view. They left Sam back at the motel, and Dean is crawling in his skin, suffocating and going crazy with it and trying hard not to show it. “Son, I don’t know what’s going on with you lately, but it’s got to stop, you hear me? I know I ask a lot of you, but you’ve got to set a good example for Sammy. I’ve got to know I can count on you. Now, I’m only going to ask this once: did something happen that I need to know about?”

_ The witch, _ he thinks.  _ The kids. _ There’s a tiny part of his brain way deep in the back going  _ daddy, save me,  _ but he’s too old, and that’s not what he’s for. He’s the one who rescues, not the one who needs rescuing.

He shakes his head. “No, sir.”

Dad nods. “Alright.”

He turns into the drive-through lane, and that’s the end of it. It’s a relief as much as it isn’t. Dean thinks he should be able to breathe again—he still has his dad’s trust. He can still do his job. He can still keep Sammy safe. Except he still can’t breathe, hasn’t been able to breathe for weeks, so he just stares out the window until he forgets about the tightness in his lungs.

They get three cheeseburgers and two orders of fries to share. Sammy is waiting right back at the hotel, right where they left him, and Dean wishes he didn’t still feel like there was something heavy pressing on his chest.

Dad’s in a talkative mood for the rest of the night. He has three beers and no more, and Sam soaks it up, perking right up and forgetting about being left back at the motel while Dad and Dean went out. Dad tells stories and Sam asks questions, and Dean laughs along at their jokes, but it feels like there’s an invisible wall between him and everyone else. Nothing quite reaches him.

Sam scoots closer to get at the fries, knocking his knee into Dean’s in the process. He leaves it there like he’s forgotten while he asks Dad another question about the haunted circus, but when Dean moves his leg, Sam scoots right back.

They finish their dinner like that, Sam leaning against Dean, keeping him tethered to the earth through a single point of contact.

* * *

Dean thinks about that little blue book of Sam’s, the college book tucked in his duffel. He remembers the hotel Sam took it from. It had blue bedspreads and a pretty teenage girl working behind the check-in desk, one with shiny pink braces punctuating a dimpled smile.

He wonders where he was when Sam took it—if he was out loading the car with Dad, or maybe at the vending machine. Maybe he was in the shower thinking about the girl at the check-in desk. Maybe he was right there, too busy with whatever bullshit he’d deemed important at the time. Maybe he was right there, and he just didn’t notice.

He hates that book with a fervor that freaks him out a little bit. He thinks about sneaking into Sam’s bag when he’s asleep, when he’s in the shower. He thinks about tossing it in the big dumpster outside, or maybe dousing it in lighter fluid and lighting it up. He knows better than to think that would solve the problem, but he wants it to be that simple. Salt and burn it, watch it go up in smoke and with it, Sam’s dreams of leaving him.

“We make a pretty good team,” he’d said.

He didn’t say it because it was true. He doesn’t even know if it’s true, but it kills him, the idea of never getting to find out. He’d said it because it was the only thing to say. Because between that and  _ don’t leave me, please never leave me, _ he knows which one to pick.

“What?” Sam asks when he finds Dean squinting at his bag.

“Nothing,” Dean says, turning a smirk on Sam.

Nothing. It’s nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) if you wanna.


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